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11 September, 2010

No hollows and no food left for wildlife

AS SPECIES reach extinction point in the fire-affected forests of the Central Highlands, 80 kilometres from Melbourne, timber giant Gunns has conceded it's finally over (''Timber giant concedes defeat in decades-old logging war'', The Age, 10/9).

Gunns will rebuild its brand with new ventures in plantations but for the species whose future they robbed, surviving in post-fire, salvage-logged landscapes, the trajectory is not so positive. No hollows, no homes, no food.

The logging has scraped the last of the Leadbeater's possum's fragmented habitat into piles of poor sawlog and pulp logs that has, with gross subsidy, won a profit for the state's loggers, VicForests.

Well done, Gunns, for exiting, but now the real work begins for John Brumby, as it has been under his policy that Victoria's faunal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, has been committed to likely extinction.